I’ve been exploring console emulation out of curiosity and testing purposes, and I’m specifically looking into PS4 emulators. I know PS4 emulation is still relatively new and not as mature as older console emulators, but are there any stable options out there that developers or testers are using for experimentation?
I’m mainly interested in performance, compatibility, and whether the emulator is being actively developed. Bonus if it can be used for QA or input testing scenarios. Would love to hear what others in the dev/testing space are using or watching.
If you’re more into testing at the system level or want to explore the PS4 architecture, check out Orbital by AlexAltea.
It’s still in development and doesn’t run commercial games yet, but from a QA/dev standpoint, it’s incredibly valuable.
You can observe how low-level hardware emulation works, especially with the PS4’s kernel and firmware behavior.
Great if you’re into OS-level testing, firmware patch simulation, or even just reverse engineering workflows. It’s not for gameplay, but very much for emulator architecture and systems testing.
As of now, fpPS4 is the only project that’s made visible progress in running some commercial PS4 games (albeit very simple ones). It’s an open-source emulator written in Free Pascal, which is quirky, but also what makes it interesting for experimentation.
It’s not ideal for performance testing at scale, but if your QA work involves rendering, shader validation, or low-resource title testing, fpPS4 can give you a good sandbox to poke around. Just don’t expect major AAA games to work yet.
No true PS4 emulator for QA yet , but LambdaTest fills the gap in a different way . Right now, there’s no reliable PS4 emulator that can run commercial games for true QA workflows.
But if your testing involves UI responsiveness, input simulation, or mobile-web behavior on game-related portals, I’d highly recommend using something like LambdaTest.
I’ve used it to test companion apps, game landing pages, and controller-compatible browser interfaces across multiple devices and OS versions.
While it won’t emulate a PS4, it’s incredibly helpful for testing PSN-integrated web flows, remote play portals, or storefront behavior under different conditions (latency, viewport sizes, etc.).
So for broader ecosystem testing, even if you’re targeting gamers, LambdaTest can play a critical supporting role in your QA toolchain.